


Beelzebub's Day Out

by CopperBeech



Series: Absent Without Leave [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Aziraphale Loves Crowley (Good Omens), Beelzebub cleans up good, Clubbing, Crowley Loves Aziraphale (Good Omens), Day Spa, Don't copy to another site, Female Beelzebub (Good Omens), Fluff, Gen, Humor, Ineffable Husbands (Good Omens), Narrow Escapes, Soft Crowley (Good Omens)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-02
Updated: 2019-09-02
Packaged: 2020-09-30 19:26:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20452331
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CopperBeech/pseuds/CopperBeech
Summary: Crowley's desertion has set off a quiet flicker of unrest in Hell. Beelzebub gets a wild hair, and decides to see what he finds so attractive about life on Earth. Hijinks ensue.Before he could think what he was doing, he smacked a hand into her vinyl-skirted behind and nodded his head towards the table. Then his brain caught up with his juddering sense of apprehension and informed him:I have just smacked… Beelzebub… on the bum. I have just smacked the Lord of the Flies, the right hand of Satan, the viceroy of Hell… on the bum.But all she said was “Someone gave me this pill. It’s terrific. I don’t want to stop dancing.”Oh bless everything to Heaven, he thought, now she’s taking club drugs.Then it got worse.





	Beelzebub's Day Out

The alley she emerged into contained only bins, and a couple of rats, which was reasonably homelike. It was early, but there was already a whiff of automobile exhaust in the air, and a pungent smell from a ruptured trash bag that had attracted the rats’ attention. They quieted respectfully, noticing who she was or at least where she’d come from, and she moved as silently as possible to the mouth of the alley and looked in either direction. The pavements were already busy, but nearly everyone was looking at a mobile phone or craning their necks to see if a bus was coming, and no one noticed her emerging from the alley.

That was reassuring. When she’d come up from Below she’d felt more than heard a loud BOOM, something that was behind her almost before she’d taken it in. She was worried someone from Below might have followed her, but the little echolocation-like sense that always tells a demon when another demon is near was sound asleep. She decided she was safe.

There was a newspaper kiosk nearby, and a long-haired young man hawking something called _The Big Issue._ She saw money changing hands for that, though, and she didn’t yet have any – she’d need to do something about that – and opened one of the street boxes that said plainly FREE, hoping just to get a sense of her surroundings. As she turned away with the paper, taking stock of the vicinity, she noticed the twinned red oculus on her head reflected in a closed shopfront. The girl inside, who was running a cloth over a row of little tables, gawped at her. Problem. She ran a hand over her head, making the oversized red orbs disappear. The smutches on her face didn’t seem to belong either. She moved to a different shop window, where the blinds were down, and rubbed with her sleeve here and there until her most of the grime was at least evenly distributed.

“Hard night, love?” said the young man with the Big Issue, as she turned and found herself face to face with him. “I’ve had ’em. You look rough. Get yourself a cuppa.” And surprisingly, he reached out and dropped several coins into her palm.

“You’re just – giving me this?” she asked. She wondered if it was going to be this easy.

“I’ve seen times that were tougher than this, love. I know what it’s like. I’ve had a good morning, like to share. If you’re ready to clean up, I’m always here in the mornings, I know some good people who can help.”

She was a little baffled.

“No pressure,” he said. “You have to be ready.”

“Thank you,” she said and pocketed the money. She had not expected – well, she didn’t know what she expected, but not someone to be kind to her right away.

Moving off through the morning crush of office workers, the Demon Beelzebub embarked on her day out in London.

* * *

She supposed it had started with Crowley. There had been something frightening but fascinating about watching him defy the Lords of Hell – insouciantly, as if it were all just a sidenote in his day – and wallow cheerfully in Holy Water… _Holy Water!!!_ It had only been a niggling thought at the back of her mind that day, but it refused to go away. Some kind of change was going on, and it didn’t all look bad. Not to mention the expression on Hastur’s face. Hastur had always been a prat, talking over her in meetings and swanning those Yellow Signs of his about as if it made him someone special, or flashing his Carcosan passport. No regard for anyone else’s time either. Like today. She’d had nothing on her schedule, which was happening more frequently now that the boss was in a sulk, and then Hastur’d asked for morning facetime, and then he’d cancelled it at the last minute with a skimpy apology, really starting to get too big for his boots, and she had just thought: I’m going. No one is expecting me anywhere, and I’m going up there to see what it’s like. Crowley went and lived with humans for sixty centuries, and look how well it’s done by him. I want to try it. Just one day.

She would start with this “cuppa” business. The coins were a palpable weight in her pocket. She sat down on a bench, counting them. A tired-looking woman sitting at the other end apparently felt chatty. “You here from the States, then?”

“I – just arrived,” said Beelzebub.

“Thought so. I always see tourists trying to figure out the money.”

“Is there enough here for a cuppa?” she asked.

“There, see, you’ve already picked up a little. Separated by a common language, they say. You could get a nice cup of tea and some scones or a sandwich for that, there’s a caff right around the corner. Poppy’s.”

“Thanks,” said Beelzebub. Why were these people so nice?

* * *

Poppy’s was only slightly busy, enough to give her a chance to wait and see how things were done. When it was her turn she went to the counter and said “A cuppa and one of those, please.” There were some redcurrant scones in a glass dome on the counter, and they looked attractively bloodstained. “This is all I’ve got, is it enough?”

The counter girl looked her up and down: business clothes, but scorched from underneath, and a faint film of grime that a sleeve wasn’t enough to expunge. “Oh! You most have been in that Tube accident. Lost your stuff, have you? Sit down, I’ll bring it. I’ve had people come in this morning looked even worse than you, if you can believe that.”

She brought the tea, nearly beige with milk, and a plate with two scones. “A little extra on the house,” she said. “That was _awful,_ you must be shattered.” In a lower voice she added “If you lost your phone too you can make a call here. I’m not supposed to, but you’ve had a bad morning, I can tell.”

There was a television behind the counter, and the sound was down but the Sky breaking-news crawl was informing the public that part of the Bakerloo line was down after an unexplained fire on the tracks that had filled the station with smoke but involved only a few minor injuries. She wondered if that had anything to do with the noise she’d heard on her way up. Her invisible antennas were still receiving nothing, though, and she decided that in this case, fire underground was just – well, a fire on the Underground. It gave her good cover.

Eating scones, she found, was not at all like devouring souls; they were doughy, and stuck on the roof of her mouth, but the waitress refilled her teacup, and not too much clung to her teeth. “That’s better now, isn’t it? Nothing like a good cup of tea. Once you get a hot bath and a lie down you’ll be right as rain.”

“Excuse me, I’m waiting,” said a woman at the counter. She had, truly, barely stepped up, but she was already tapping a high-heeled foot with impatience “_If_ you’re done chatting up the other customers.” She had the strained, chronically irritated look that seems to afflict women with too much wealth, and the tasteful suit, thin gold bangles, and petite handbag that went with it.

“Right away, marm,” said the waitress, muttering so that no one but Beelzebub could hear her, “_cow._” The posh woman, far too important and in a hurry to sit in a cafe and have her tea and croissant with common folk, took the sack that the waitress shortly handed to her and stalked out, pausing for a glance down her nose at the disheveled Beelzebub, who was working on a small infernal miracle and ignored it.

“Good luck, love,” said the waitress when she rose. “Sure you don’t need to call anyone?”

“I – no.” Who would she call?

“Well there’s a Virgin Mobile kiosk just past the Tube station if you need a replacement. Horace in there’s a dear, when I lost my phone last month he just pulled up my account quick as you like, had a new one set up in no time. Tell him hello from Charmaine.”

If the waitress noticed that the stuck-up lady had left her dainty handbag on the counter, or that Beelzebub took it with her when she left, she said nothing.

* * *

The handbag contained a lipstick and compact, a prescription vial, a sheaf of notes and some coins, and most importantly a metal case stuffed with bank cards and a card bearing a photo of the well-off woman’s face. She had seen people enter the cafe and hand over their bank cards instead of coin, so she had a fair idea how they were used. This would do. She wished now that she’d spoken to Mammon more often – it would have kept her up with the times – but she really had never had much reason to interface with anyone over in Finance. She really had just not been in the field enough, period. It’s a common problem with management.

The Virgin kiosk had just opened, and was festooned with adverts for different levels of service and a promotion exhorting passersby to CANCEL YOUR OLD PLAN AND GO WITH US – £50 signup bonus! Horace was finishing up with another customer; she could tell it was him because his name was etched on a badge attached to his shirt. She should remember that. Some of those minor demons had names that were hard to remember in meetings.

“Sure, dear, what d’ye need in a phone?” he asked. “Fast charging time, storage, want to watch videos? We’ve got some deals on the Galaxy and the Pixel.”

“I just need a phone,” she said. “I lost mine. In the Tube accident.” This was going to be a useful story.

“Oh all right, you have an account with us? Insurance? I can just switch it over.”

“No, I – “ she looked at the adverts again. “I’m going to cancel my other phone. I didn’t like them.”

“BT, Vodafone?”

“BT,” she answered because it was easy to say.

“I get lots of their customers switch. Whatever anyone else says, we’ve got the best network coverage in the UK. You could be the Rake At The Gates Of flippin’ Hell and your call would still come through. Well, I can’t give you the discount today, but if you can bring me confirmation when you cancel…”

She nodded. They settled on a Pixel (“brilliant camera in that one for the price,” he said) that wasn’t too large, and an unlimited service plan. “Now, name?”

“Beel – ah,“ she started, then caught herself. What was the snobbish woman’s name? “That is just what my friends call me. Here, on the card.”

“P-H-O-E-B-E T-H-O-M-P-S-O-N,” he typed into his terminal. “Well, that’s not like lots of the names I get, tossed salad, some of them. But _I_ shall call you Bella if everyone else does. You do look much more like a Bella.”

Another half hour of gallantry, surreptitious shuffling through the handbag for Phoebe Thompson’s address, and infinite data-input saw her onto the street, clutching a small shopping bag containing the new phone and its manual. She wasn’t sure where she would charge it, as she’d been admonished, but she was solving her problems pretty well so far.

There was a park nearby. She settled onto a bench again and opened the small paper, only vaguely grasping most of the local news items and advertisements, but one advert jumped out at her, involving baths and pampering. The cafe girl had recommended a bath. Importuning a few passersby for directions garnered some glares and one fifty-pee coin, which perplexed her, but someone finally actually looked at the paper and said, “Oh, right. That’s by the hotel my mate works weekends. You go this way and then…”

She took a few wrong turnings, and noticed that the people she asked to set her right – who were dressed more and more like the snobbish woman from the cafe, and seemed as hurried – looked increasingly disapprovingly at her dilapidated suit and coarse hair; one of them even said “I don’t think they’re hiring, dear.” At last she found the address, a row house nestled close beside a glossy hotel entrance with a horseshoe drive and a burgundy awning. A sumptuously hand-painted sandwich sign in front of the one of the curtained bow windows exhorted her: “Let us discover the New You together!” There was an image, sketched in a few curlicues of paint, of a woman’s face, surrounded by an impossibly thick swoop of hair, a flower with silver-tipped petals held against her cheek.

Rolling the little free newspaper into her jacket pocket, Beelzebub pressed down on the thumblatch and walked into the reception room of the Liliana Day Spa.

* * *

“I – took the day off work, and I need to clean up,” she explained to the slightly alarmed receptionist, an elegant woman in her late fifties with a perfect coif of almost lavender hair. “When I came up to the street and saw I looked like this – “

“Oh ducks! Were you in that Tube accident?” said the woman, something clicking behind her eyes as she registered the frayed clothes and grime but also the business dress and Beelzebub’s air of self-assurance, something that only comes naturally to a person accustomed to saying “frog” and watching people jump. “It’s been all over Twitter. I saw the photos, station full of smoke – what a _miracle_ no one was really hurt. You must have just come from Casualty. Sit down, I’ll have someone bring tea… you’ve done just the right thing. When you’ve had a fright you need pampering. Here’s our menu…”

By the time Beelzebub and the elegant woman had finished going through the menu together, she had selected a Relaxing Seaweed Bath, an exfoliating facial with a full body massage, a hairwash, cut and style, a mani/pedi, and a full makeup. “And I think with all that we can have the hotel steam your clothes and take out some of the worst stains,” said the woman, feeding Phoebe Thompson’s NatWest card into a chip reader and feeling that gold had just dropped into her lap, like the painting of Danae she’d seen in a visiting exhibit at the National. “We’re associated with them, everything should be done in plenty of time. Gemma’ll take them when she brings your robe. You’ll feel like a million, Theresa’s our _best_ masseuse. _Everyone _simply loves her.”

She’d never touched anything softer than the white terry robe, not even in her fading memories of Heaven, which had always been stronger on splendor than luxury. The slippers were a little big for her feet but deliciously cushy. The attendant drew water into an old-fashioned, claw-footed tub with brass fittings, insisted that she check the temperature three or four times to be sure it suited, and blended in powders from some packets sealed with little gold adhesive paper medallions, which had an interesting, faintly sour mineral-ocean smell. “Twenty minutes, then you drain and rinse with the overhead shower,” she said, demonstrating the controls. “Ring if you need anything, here’s your tea. Towels on the heated bar, right here, just toss them in this hamper once you’ve dried off. Magazine?”

Turban velcro’ed around her hair, Beelzebub settled in the now slightly murky water with an issue of _Vogue_. An inflated, flocked pillow in a seashell shape propped her head. Sinking to her collarbones, she began to read about runway fashion and the Return of Grunge.

* * *

“My goodness, who’s been taking care of your skin?” bustled the esthetician. “Don’t answer – I know – nobody. These high-powered jobs, up early and bed late, it always shows. And people _always_ pick the wrong products. Here, lift your head.”

A towel roll went under her neck. It was very relaxing. So were the fingertips smoothing cream over her cheeks and stroking across her temples, after some sort of “hydrating masque” had been applied and left on during a neck massage.

“There’s no need for someone so young to have _suc_h rough skin, come back a few times and you’ll see.” The woman was very chattery, but it was somehow soothing. “You should moisturize every day, but you’re a mixed type, so you want a cleanser. _Tell you a secret, dear_.” She dropped her voice as if anyone else could possibly be in the room listening. “They always want me to upsell, but the cleanser and tightener I’m finishing with today? You can get it right in Boots. I’ll write it down for you.”

* * *

She remembered to ask if she could charge her phone before lying down for the massage. Theresa was a Nigerian lady, surprisingly strong for her willowy build, with the musical accent of her nationality, and cool, expert hands. “Now see, I can tell you have a demanding job,” she said. “Shoulders up around your ears.” Her fingers seemed to be prying entire tracts of muscle away from the upper ribs of Beelzebub’s corporation. “I know Francesca did your neck, but it’s still tight. Push back on my hand – yes – there we are, now just relax while I stretch…”

She knew exactly how familiar to be with her clients, and didn’t comment on the lines of tattooed sigils down Ms. Thompson’s upper arms and spine.

* * *

“Ms. Bella Thompson, all right! Mani-pedi, right over here.”

The footbath in front of the comfortable seat was just the right degree of warm grading to hot, and had a bubbler going in it. The manicurist brought round a tray of varnishes and Beelzebub picked a black one laced with little fragments of holographic glitter. “Oh, that’s quite _punk,_” said the woman. “Going for a new look?”

“That is what the sign said,” Beelzebub answered. The girl giggled. “Aren’t you the pip! Here we are then, Glimmer Of Midnight.”

There was another, matronly but regal woman in the opposite chair, also settling into a footbath. Another young person in the lavender scrubs uniform of the spa rolled in a cart; there was an ice bucket with a bottle of white wine and a rose, and a tray of assorted little finger sandwiches. “Complimentary wine, your choice,” she said chirpily.

“Oh, this is _scrumptious,_” said the matronly woman. “I enjoy them all but I always look forward to the blue cheese. Try one.”

Beelzebub wasn’t sure about the blue cheese mousse. But the cucumber, chased with the Provencal rose, was not bad.

* * *

“Aaah, I can tell you’ve been using one of those commercial dandruff shampoos,” said the stylist. “Leaves your hair smelling like sulfur, it does, I never miss it. Makes it rough and dry, that’ll never do. I have something you’ll like _much _better here, we’ll do a moisturizing mousse first…”

Beelzebub pointed out a picture in the _Vogue _ of a model with hair about the length of her own, but shaped in a Prince Valiant fringe that had been caught in mid-swing around the model’s face by the magazine’s photographer. “Can you do something like this?”

“Do our best, love.”

* * *

“Now show me the colours you’ve been wearing. Just what’s in your bag – oh, that lipstick’s all wrong for you, you’re an Autumn. People always go by the hair, but it’s the underlying skin tone that matters. Yes, we can go a little Gothic to go with the nails, we just have to use the right colours. Hm… hm… no, this one. Lie back, just let me even out these brows.”

* * *

“Oh, Ms. Thompson, I barely recognized you. You look _years_ younger.”

The lavender-haired woman was poised to check her out, pointedly tapping the line on the final tally that suggested a 15% gratuity.

“Then we have discovered the New Me together,” Beelzebub said soberly.

“Oh, aren’t you the one. Make another appointment? Massage and yes, the facial, I can tell that’s made a world of difference… All right, Wednesday week. And remember not to work so hard, ducks, we only get to live once.”

“I should get new clothes too. For the New Me. Where is a good place?”

“Well… those have suffered enough, I have to admit. My favourite?” The woman scribbled down a store name and address. “I think our courtesy car can drop you round. You’ll love it.”

* * *

The window of the boutique where Lavender Hair had sent her was full of tasteful, luxe garments with long, drapey lines. She pondered. Looked from side to side, up and down the street full of trendy little clothiers.

_Fancy and Fetish_ seemed an outlier. It was on the corner, and the cross street was not quite so fashionable, the pavement in front not so scrupulously swept.

But oh, that glossy skirt on the mannequin, reaching only a few inches down the thigh, and the coiled symbol on the pendant chain that even the designer had probably not recognized as coming from Below…

The bell chimed and tinkled as she entered the shop.

* * *

A short while later, attired in a Pleather bustier, a matching skirt that clung to the outlines of her earthly corporation, a cropped jacket and chunk-heeled boots, with the actual pendant chain from the window display heavy at the notch of her collarbone, Beelzebub, the arm of the Adversary, AKA Bella Thompson, descended into the street carrying a shopping bag that contained her scorched, tattered Infernal wardrobe. She retained it halfway to the next crossing, and then, encountering a municipal waste bin, debated for about two and a half seconds before dropping it in.

* * *

A borough or two over, the actual Phoebe Thompson, who had been chewing the heads of subordinates and conducting high-power financial deals all day, using a phone app to order lunch at her desk, reached into the drawer where she always kept her bag. A hollow feeling opened as she scrabbled into a bagless, unhelpful space. She must have left it somewhere… That caff. that lazy counter girl. What a horrid little thief. She picked up the phone, commencing a series of calls.

* * *

She had ridden on the top deck of one of those vivid red buses. She had listened to a passionate orator at a street corner declaiming on the subject of Brexit, something she remembered Hastur diverting a lot of personnel to not long ago. She had been on an enormous revolving wheel that carried her up to a view of the whole city, the Thames a slightly whitecapped ribbon curving each way into the distance. She had taken a picture of a Japanese tour group in a park, following the instructions one of the tourists mimed for her as he handed her his phone. And now, as the sun dropped, she saw a Boots and remembered the esthetician at the spa. But when she handed Phoebe Thompson’s card over to the cashier, it wouldn’t ring up.

“This is declined, miss. Have you let it expire? I could try another – “

He looked up. His customer was gone.

* * *

It made sense there would be some way to keep people from using stolen cards. Miracling herself back into the park had simply been instinct. She had been hoping to see a film, or a show, after noticing posters in the bus shelters and the buses themselves, but this was a problem. She wanted to do it like they did, and she couldn’t afford to leave a trail of little miracles all over London if she didn’t want some other demon that might be up here on a job to catch her scent. She got out the phone to look at the maps again, found herself shuffling through the apps and was soon watching a series of tinny-sounding music videos on YouTube, intrigued by the dark-and-light of the sets and the costumes on the dancers, not so unlike her own. She was so absorbed that she jumped when a voice in her ear said “If you like that, love, want to hear some live?”

The speaker was a personable-looking young man in his early twenties, leaning with his arms crossed on the back of the bench to her left. He was one of a party of people roughly the same age, the men in jeans and T-shirts, some of them with vivid colours in their hair, the women in short skirts and tops with spaghetti straps or glitter designs. It seemed they were “going clubbing.” It sounded violent, but she picked up the meaning as they walked along, the young man amused to call her Bella – “that’s me mum’s name” – and seemingly fascinated when she said it was her first time clubbing in London. “We’ll show you a good time,” he said. “All agreed? We going to make sure my mum here has a good time?”

“Don’t fall for Sparky’s lines,” he said more quietly in her ear, nodding toward a huskier young man with a gold nose stud who had also been eyeing her thoughtfully. “If I’m getting on with a girlie he always tries to move in, just can’t help himself.”

But when they reached their destination – a doorway in a street full of everything from bakeries to sex shops – there was a queue. “Ow, no,” said Sparky. “They’re checking again.”

“Well I heard they almost got shut down last week ‘cos someone was in there fourteen,” said one of the girls.

The music coming out of the door was vivid, visceral. It was like diving into one of those film clips on the phone. Suddenly she was eager to go inside, to be in someplace filled with that sound and flashing light, but when she got to the head of the queue and showed Phoebe Thompson’s identification card, the doorkeeper, a burly man wearing wraparound sunglasses even in the sinking light, looked her up and down and said “This isn’t you, love. Maybe it’s your mum, but you weren’t born in seventy-six.”

“I’m older than I look,” said Beelzebub.

“She’s _my_ mum,” said her companion, to the general amusement of the party.

“Sorry, nice try,” said the doorkeeper. “Just go on home, I’m not here to make trouble for you. Come back when you’re old enough.”

Her new friend looked stricken, and fell out of the line with her.

“You need a fake ID,” he said in a muted voice. “Look, I know someone who can fix you up. Best in London. Give me your phone number and I’ll text it to you later,”

It wouldn’t help anything, but she did, and he turned to join his friends. “See you again maybe?”

He was still eyeing her as he went into the club door. Even the bouncer gave her a wave.

That was when she had an idea.

* * *

She knew the address, and she had gotten good enough with the phone to map her way to it. Demons, as has been mentioned, have something of a radar for other demons, so she wasn’t going to take silence for an answer and pounded a third and a fourth time, calling, “Crowley! I know you’re in there! I’m not going to hurt you, I need to talk!”

She was considering what her next move could possibly be when the door opened a crack.

“Stop that row, won’t you? It’s upsetting the plants.”

A nozzle was pointed at her through the crack of the door.

“I’ve got Holy Water,” he said. (He was, of course, bluffing.) “And you know it won’t touch me.“

“Crowley – truce!” She stood back from the door to display her makeover, and incidentally to get out of the way of the plant mister. “I sneaked out without telling anyone. I want to see how they live. How you live.”

“What the fuck, Bubs. Last I saw you were the right hand of Satan – “

“And he’s been holed up and not coming out even for all-hands meetings since his _own son_ flipped him off.”

“_And_ you frog-marched me off while I was having a _beautiful day _in the park and had me dredged in a tub full of holy water – “

“Which you splashed around in like it was the blood of innocents! Without so much as getting _pruney!!“_ (Here Crowley made a mental note to compliment Aziraphale again on the flourish he had clearly brought to the impersonation.) “Things are… are changing, Crowley. Living up here has changed _you. _ I want to see – I want to know what it’s like. How you do it.”

“Well, looks as if you’ve already had a bath, _that’s_ a start,” he said, and cautiously, eyes not leaving her, slipped the chain and opened the door, keeping the mister aimed for effect. But she made no move other than to step inside and look around her. The plants rustled.

“You lot, I don’t want to hear a word out of you,” he said. “Come on in the kitchen and we’ll talk. What exactly can I do for you here?”

“I need a fake ID. And I want you to take me clubbing,” said Beelzebub.

* * *

“This is probably a bad idea,” said Crowley as the Bentley pulled smoothly out into traffic. Beelzebub was looking at the CD albums which had been scattered on the passenger seat until she needed to get into it. “Are these good?” she said, looking at an Academy of St. Martin in the Fields release of Symphonies by John Marsh and wondering if it was anything like the videos.

“Owww, why not, little music, get you in the mood,” said Crowley, popping it into the deck. The driving rhythms of “We Will Rock You” filled the passenger compartment. Beelzebub began to sway a little from side to side.

“There’s this place I know, it’s like the Underworld of the Underworld,” Crowley explained as backups seemed to slide aside for them and signals changed their minds and went from yellow to green again without stopping for red. “No, really, there’s this place called the Underworld. And then there’s the place down the road and around the back. Tartarus. They know me. Band on a Thursday night won’t be anything special, but it’ll do for a start.” The streetlights and signals slid over his sunglasses and the various reflective parts of Beelzebub’s outfit. “Sweaty, loud, shoes stick to the floor, toilets’re a nightmare. You’ll love it. We’ll just get a little food in you on the way, it’s part of the experience. Have you eaten since you came up?”

“I ate a scone. I ate a cucumber sandwich. They were interesting, but I do not see why they eat so frequently.”

“Well, you’re in for something totally different.”

Yes, it was almost certainly a bad idea. But it was also one in the eye for Hell, and promised to be a memory that would keep him warm on cold nights when Aziraphale had stayed up late reading a book. It had been known to happen.

* * *

“It tastes of greed and decay,” she said. “I like it. And the… humans eat it frequently?”

“Some do. They like it because you can just walk in, and get it, and go,” said the demon who had waited six thousand years for his true love.

“What is a ‘Burger King?’ “ Beelzebub asked, looking at the printed labels.

“All I know is I’m pretty sure it’s one of ours,’ said Crowley, who had bought nothing for himself but a cup of coffee. The coffee actually wasn’t bad. Beelzebub tried hers.

“This – is different,” she said. “It reminds me of… Before.”

That was as close as demons ever got to mentioning the Fall. “It helps them stay awake. Me, I like sleeping. One of the best things going on here. But tonight we want to be _up._”

“Ohhhh.” Beelzebub had discovered the shoestring potatoes. “This _is_ like devouring souls, only it’s harder to stop.”

* * *

Just before rising to leave, Crowley thumbed through the contacts on his phone till he lit on one marked by the avatar of a white-glazed mug with little angel wings converging to form the handle. Aziraphale was not handy with his mobile, a gift from Crowley, which he still described as “new-fangled,” but he might actually check it.

_Might be out late, _he texted. _Something came up. Don’t wait up for me._

Though he knew the angel would.

* * *

“Anthony! Haven’t seen you in ages.”

“Been busy. Finally got some time free. Good band tonight?” The rhythms coming from inside were already provoking an almost unconscious sway in Beelzebub’s shoulders. “Bella, this is Maurice. Think he lives here.” Maurice looked less like a street tough than the doorkeeper at the other club, but he filled his jacket with a sleek bulk that let you know his job description included tying rowdy drunks in the kind of knots most people only see if they’ve been in a Scout troop. He and Crowley clearly went back a way. He did not ask “Bella” for her ID.

“New lot, but they’re sounding good,” said Maurice. “Early yet, there ought to still be tables free.”  
  
Crowley, of course, could always get a table.

* * *

“What is this?”

“Gin and tonic. Call it G and T. It’s the lifeblood of the British nation.”

“Ooh, it’s bitter, like brimstone.”

“Don’t drink it all at one go, it’s mild but it’s not exactly herb tea.”

The dance floor was starting to fill up. Beelzebub studied the patrons, some of them dancing shuffle-footed and still holding their drinks, some of them flinging themselves with abandon, a few clearly in the early stages of mating rituals. The club was dark, with colored spots on the band and staccato flashes of light coming from elsewhere around the room. It was like some parts of Below, except that they were enjoying it.

“Do you do this?”

“Have done.”  
  
“Show me!” And ignoring Crowley’s advice, she tossed back the remainder of her drink, some of which trickled back across her cheek into her hair. The light flashed over the symbol hanging around her neck as she surged up from the table, grabbing Crowley’s jacket sleeve. It was clearly an order: “Show me how to club!”

“Sorry, mate,” said Crowley to the man she nearly knocked to the floor, trying not to capsize himself as she dragged him into the middle of the crowd.

Dancing had never been Crowley’s strong suit; he left that kind of thing to Aziraphale, who would not have recognized what happened in this club as dancing at all. Once in a while it was necessary to blend in at one of these places, if there was a mass temptation on that made it worth the trouble, but he preferred to slouch broodingly at his table nursing a good drink, gangly black-jeaned legs stretched out and crossed at the ankles, enjoying the music and looking dangerous or tragic, according to his mood. Beelzebub was giving him no choice. She let go of his sleeve, at least; she seemed moved to imitate the girls who were taking this opportunity to show how flexible they were and how much Ecstasy they’d already taken. A few people didn’t quite register that she was dancing with Crowley at all; a man almost too old for this crowd, with a strong Northern accent, made a fair-sized prat of himself trying to keep up with her gyrations, asking her name and if she’d been there before, until Crowley sidled up to him and said in his ear, “Watch yourself, she can eat your soul for lunch, mate,” and supplanted him in a fore-and-aft step that was about the extent of his repertoire.

He’d had enough pretty quickly. She hadn’t. He wanted another drink, and he wanted to keep an eye on the room. Maurice was leaning against the wall by his table when he got back from the bar, with an amused smile.

“Live one, eh?” He had not really seen Crowley come in with anyone before, and was enjoying this hugely.

“You don’t know.”

“Good luck,” said Maurice.

* * *

It all started to go pear-shaped toward the end of the set.

Crowley watched in mounting alarm as Beelzebub shimmied out of her admittedly hot-looking (in all senses of the word) studded jacket and tossed it over a chair, flinging her bare arms up to sway back and forth. A little space opened out around her as she began turning in a tight circle, like a child playing at getting dizzy, then snapped from side to side, a palm tree in a gale force wind. Sweat gleamed on her bare shoulders and arms, bringing out the sigils, and the light show flashed on the pendant at the hollow of her throat. The annoying Yorkshireman moved in to slam fronts with her, then backed away, only to be supplanted by a beardless yokel in jeans and T-shirt who swayed in time with her until she spun away to a third partner, and a fourth. The Yorkshireman began to clap in time with the music, shouting “_Go_ Bella! _Go_ Bella!” A couple of the others picked it up. She tossed her head back and snapped it forward, the newly styled hair fanning to catch the light show. “Bel_-la! _Bel_-la! _Bel_-la!_” chanted her new dance troupe, harem and cheering section. The band caught the fever and began to lean into the beat harder, the lead guitarist finally spilling into a cadenza that moved Beelzebub to sway, shimmy and strike poses in the little clearing of gummy floor. A final riff on the drums, a discordant open-stringed envoi, the guitarist leaned into the mic and acknowledged on a descending accent: “_Bella.” _ Then the band launched into a new song, and she was coming toward him, flushed, eyes large and dark, panting like someone who’d just run a race. Another customer sidled by carrying two G and Ts, and she simply grabbed one and downed half. Her expression was like that of someone who’d just discovered the meaning of her existence. Crowley shoved a tenner at the man and mouthed “Sorry.”

“You little tart, what am I going to do with you?” he stage-whispered, shoving her jacket in her general direction. “We don’t want to attract that much attention.”

“Oh but _Crowley, _it’s amazing – “

Before he could think what he was doing, he smacked his palm into her vinyl-skirted behind and nodded his head towards the table. Then his brain caught up with his juddering sense of apprehension and informed him: _I have just smacked… Beelzebub… on the bum. I have just smacked the Lord of Flies, the right hand of Satan, the viceroy of Hell… on the bum._

But all she said was “Someone gave me this pill. It’s terrific. I don’t want to stop dancing.”

Oh bless everything to Heaven, he thought, now she’s taking club drugs.

Then it got worse.

* * *

Hastur had had a shitty day, and he had a feeling it was about to get shittier. As soon as he walked in the club he had the sense that there was another demon in there. Maybe more than one.

He’d started the day intending to meet with Beelzebub, ostensibly to discuss some ideas he had for maximizing the damage from the Brexit project (but mostly to annoy her), and then gotten a ping from a trace he’d put on a human telling him the man was ripe for damnation, ready to sell his soul for fame, fortune and whatever else it was people got out of being rock stars. He couldn’t miss this one; after the Crowley affair there’d been a lot of jockeying for position below, the favorite demon disgraced and all that, a power vacuum to be filled, and he was determined to fill it. This soul was a plum. And _then_ he’d had to deal with a problem with some junior maintenance demon, who claimed he’d seen someone using an unauthorized portal that was offline from the rest of the network, and gotten all ambitious and tried to pursue, only to end up creating an explosion and a fire up there in the mortals’ transit system. He’d fried himself severely, though not fatally, in the process, and the accident and injury report had taken Hastur far too much time. Now instead of orchestrating an encounter with his target at the expected afternoon wake-up, he was hours behind schedule, and someone was clearly planning to poach him.

Crowley, of course, was feeling the same disquieting signal. The crowd between their table and the doors was becoming impassable, but he homed in on the movement of someone trying to cut through toward the bandstand, where the band was plunging into what was clearly the last number of the set, full of pounding and metal riffs. His already cold blood – serpent, after all – dropped sharply in temperature as he made out the silhouette. There was a porkpie hat hiding the frog, but it was Hastur, all right.

He seized Beelzebub’s bare arm. “We’ve got to get out of here.”

“Not now! This is _brilliant_, I see now – “

“_Hastur,”_ he hissed in her ear. “Must be here for one of his twopenny temptations, bloody Hastur, it’s like watching paint dry – “

She grabbed her jacket. “Try to sober up,” he said. The crowd between them and the door was even denser now as a group of new patrons pushed in, and wasn’t that Hastur looking a little too keenly in their direction? “Don’t shove, mate, _oi!” _said someone as Crowley tried futilely to push past. It wasn’t happening, at least not fast enough to keep Hastur from catching up for a closer recce. He looked frantically around the room, saw a line of light along a door that was almost always shut, and moments later was plunging, dragging Beelzebub behind him, into the ladies’ toilet. The bolt went home. “We are so fucked,” he said.

It wasn’t exactly the worst toilet in London, but it was never going to be in the running for Loo Of The Year; a cracked, dusky mirror reflected them hazily from over a sink set in a splashed vanity shelf, the tap dripping. A mildewy, rust-stained bowl occupied the corner across from a condom dispenser. Beelzebub turned this way and that in fascination. “What are we doing?”

“Buying time,” said Crowley. “Thing is, if we miracle ourselves out of here, he’ll know. He’ll probably even know who it _is._ And home right in on us. Try to think about not being a demon. Oh bollocks, he’s closer.”

The band had finished, but Hastur was determined to run out the competition first off; no one else was getting credit for this one. The rap on the door wasn’t him, though; a queue had formed rapidly, and from the sound of it, there were a lot of women who’d emptied their little water bottles after downing their tabs, and were now bursting for a piss. Some of the language outside the door was impressively profane.

“This is not avoiding attention,” said Beelzebub, unhelpfully. Now there was a male voice in the general scrum.

“All right in there?”

Maurice felt called on to take a hand. Crowley kept mum, mind racing, while he called a second and a third time.

“I had two people OD in the bogs last month,” came Maurice’s voice. “I’m going in.” And, quite alarmingly, there was the impact of his large shoulder on the outside of the door panel. The screws on the slidebolt complained, but didn’t pop – yet. Crowley seized Beelzebub bodily then, swung her around and deposited her bottom on the very fake marble of the vanity sink.

“What are we doing – “

“Giving ourselves a reason to be in here together and get left to it,” said Crowley. “Put your legs around me, that’s it. Cross your ankles, hide your face in my neck.” There was a groan of tearing wood as the bolt pulled half free. _How am I ever going to explain this to Aziraphale?_ thought Crowley, surprising himself, and felt a sudden wave of longing for the angel and his wonderful, fussy, stodgy presence in the bedroom of the flat. Beelzebub shuddered a moment against him, as if – was she _frightened? _”Okay there?”

“I am fine” – her voice, though, didn’t sound it – “what are you – “

The door gave in then, Maurice’s jacketed shoulders filling it. Miming the movements of a man deep in a knee-trembler with the young lady of the moment, Crowley turned his head only slightly to shout “D’ye_ mind,_ mate! I’d give you some privacy if you got lucky!”

Maurice’s frame was entirely blocking the door. “Anthony – ah –– there’s a line –”

“Tell ‘em to _use the gents_! – _Make some noise like you’re enjoying this_,” he whispered to Beelzebub.

“_Oh, this is_ _scrumptious!!!” _she complied, remembering the woman in the pedicure salon.

“Never mind,” mouthed Crowley. He could hear Maurice backing out, saying ”Out of order.”

“Should I say it again?” asked Beelzebub as Crowley pushed away, knees actually shaking a little.

“Never mind, I think I’ve got a plan now – “

But Hastur’s voice was now clearly audible over the others in the crowded hallway. The door pushed half open before Crowley could get the side of his foot against it. “You’ll be sorry you tried to poach my territory!” Hastur roared.

“She en’t your _territory_, mate, she’s a free woman,” came Maurice’s voice. “If she wants to shag someone else you can drop her but you can’t act like this.” A sound of struggling and mighty swearing, counterpointed by a chorus of squeals, indicated Maurice was enforcing his views on partner relationships with all the power of his hundred-plus kilo bench press. Crowley leaped up on the lavatory seat, peering out the transom casement above it.

“Good job, there’s bins right outside,” he said. “You first.” He jumped back to the floor, gesturing Beelzebub to get up on the edge of the toilet.

“That is not holy water?” she said nervously.

“Fucking well hope not. Up!” She got her hands on the window ledge, head and shoulders through, and Crowley boosted her out with one hand and a complete absence of respect. His longer frame was almost too complicated to go out the same way, but after a momentary contortion he landed on his back on the lid of a large square skip labeled _No Dumping._ “Car’s this way,” he said, pulling Beelzebub along.

But the Bentley, as was obvious half a block away, was immobilized by a neon-orange boot.

“Miracle that off, it’ll be like sending up a flare with our names on it,” he said. Commotion at the door of the club suggested Hastur was discovering Maurice’s ability to pick someone up like a cardboard cutout and reposition them on the GPS grid. “He’ll see us, just run – “

“If we can get far enough below ground – “ the chunky heels were laying down a _prestissimo_ beat behind Crowley. “You know how that makes it easier. I can get back without giving us away.”

“Camden Town,” said Crowley.

He could sense Hastur’s presence a distance behind them. The Lord of the Frogs wasn’t giving up.

* * *

When Maurice re-entered the club after ejecting the First Arsehole Of The Evening, aka Hastur, Duke of Hell and Special Envoy to Carcosa, the Ladies’ was back in business and the lead guitarist was seated at the bar in an intense discussion that seemed to involve a gig, or several, it looked more like, as he eavesdropped without being too obvious.

“It was the way you worked the crowd when that girl was dancing. You’ve got the showmanship.” Maurice couldn’t know it, but it was the launch of a career, maneuvers by Hastur not required.

The most popular track on their first album would be titled "Bella."

Anthony seemed to have vanished with his young lady. “Good on you,” murmured Maurice as he resumed his post by the door.

* * *

Crowley took the faregates at a run, blowing past late-night riders in various states of inebriation and a station attendant who shouted ineffectually “Oi! You!” as his long legs vaulted him over. He whirled back for a second to pull Beelzebub behind him, ignoring the curses and shouts of passengers from an arriving train as the two hurtled through the straggling crowd towards the escalators. Down at the level of the trains, they slowed to a near walk. “Far enough?” said Crowley.

“Almost…”

Beelzebub dodged down a stairway that seemed to lead to a maintenance tunnel, deserted, dark, grimy. Demons don’t need to catch their breath, exactly, but the thought of being rumbled by Hastur in the circumstances had clearly rattled her.

“I cannot feel him now,” she said, “can you?”

“Nope.”

She leaned against the wall with eyes closed for a moment, then nodded.

“You can feel Below from here,” she said. “Close enough to touch.”

The phrase seemed to make her think of something.

“Crowley,” she said. “When we were in that little room and – pretending, I could feel you thinking about – the angel, what you feel for him. Is that what _they_ feel? They call each other ‘mate’ and ‘love’ all the time – What you – Is that one of the changes that comes from – living with them?”

A moment's silence. “Yeah, reckon it might be,” said Crowley,

“It was – it almost hurt. Like… Before… it was too much light –”

“I know what you mean,” said Crowley.

She turned then without another word, put a hand against the tile wall, convoluted through several dimensions not yet mapped by twenty-first century physics, and was gone.

Crowley looked down. Somehow Phoebe Thompson’s handbag had made it this far, but not gone with her. He thumbed through the cards, found the identification and a business card, thought a moment and snapped his fingers. The handbag vanished.

The next day Phoebe Thompson found her bag exactly where it was meant to be, in the deep file drawer of her desk, simply half covered with an overfilled folder. She blamed the cafe girl for annoying her so much that she hadn’t had a thorough look before assuming theft. She had gone to the trouble of cancelling all those cards, and, as Crowley (having heard Beelzebub’s story) intended, she wasn’t happy. But then, she was rarely happy about anything.

* * *

By the time Hastur made it to the faregates the aggrieved station attendant was describing the latest fare-jumping incident to a transport constable, who spotted Hastur just as he started to become the next, leaping to yank back on the demon's elbow. The porkpie hat went flying. Hastur cursed in one of the lost tongues of Hell, reinforcing an impression that he wasn’t quite right in the head.

“Oh, aren’t _you _the pretty one,” said the attendant.

“Smells like a rose, too, don’t he,” said the constable. “And wot’s – Alf, will you look at this!”

“What?”

“‘E’s got a fooken frog on his fooken head. What you done that for, eh?” Hastur glared, trying to decide how big a cock-up would be laid against his name if he simply incinerated the whole station. “Like that joke, Alf – _it started out as a wart on me arse!!!”_

Carried away by his own sense of humor, the constable didn’t see the head-butt from Hastur coming. (The frog bounced hard, but stayed on tight.)

“Ow! Bugger off to Hell!” he howled, clapping his hand over a gushing nose.

“Sod this,” said Hastur, and did exactly as instructed.

* * *

Beelzebub re-entered Hell about where she’d left it, in a maintenance corridor that was more or less the Infernal twin of the Tube tunnel where she’d left Crowley. Regretfully, she turned her sleek new clothes into her old ones, leaving only the heavy pendant at her throat. She ran her hand through her hair to ruffle it up, and restored the red paired oculus atop her head when she noticed a curious stare from a junior demon hurrying past.

And then the phone in her pocket made a pinging sound. She frowned and eased it out of what had been a studded black canvas jacket moments before, seeing a name and number that meant nothing to her. She tapped the code she’d set up with Horace, and the MESSAGE notification.

_Chandan Kumar,_ it read, giving a string of digits. _Call him Sandy. Works at the City Print in Holborn. Tell him Chaz sent you._

_See you again? My mates liked you._

She stood for a while – her face unreadable enough to give hives to a whole room full of subordinate demons – and slipped the phone back in her pocket.

_* * *_

Crowley rested his forehead for a moment against the cool, smooth door paneling before letting himself into the flat. Miracling the boot off the Bentley had taken just about his last burst of demonic energy, and all he wanted was a tall glass of that Lucozade stuff that Aziraphale had laid into the fridge during the heat wave, and then a conversation with his pillows.

“Angel?” he called as he let himself in. “I’m home! _Bloody finally,” _he added more softly as he tossed his jacket onto the couch. Even the plants could tell he was knackered, and didn’t even pretend to cringe as he stumbled toward the soft flush of light from the bedroom.

Aziraphale was either trying to make it look as if he weren’t waiting up, or else he really was that absorbed in _Middlemarch._ His reading glasses glinted in the soft light of the bedlamp, and he was wearing crisp, pink-and-white piped pyjamas.

“How was your day, dear?” he asked, only half glancing up.

Crowley flung his length onto the coverlet, coming to rest face up with his boots trailing on the carpet. “Exhausting,” he said. “Absolutely bloody exhausting.”

“What ever did you do? It’s so late.”

“Oh – you know – the usual sort of thing. Tempted a demon, climbed through a window, had to jump the Camden Town faregate – “

“Tempted a demon? What on earth did you offer him?” Aziraphale sounded as if he assumed Crowley was pulling his leg – hm, that was a nice thought, even as tired as he was.

“She. I took Beelzebub to Burger King.”

Asiraphale set down his book at last. “Dear! Were you trying to keep a low profile? Why not at least that grubby little hole in the wall in Poland Street where they make that divine ceviche? Really – “

“_Divine_ might have hit the wrong note,” said Crowley. “And she’s a _fly_, they’re not known for their refined tastes. Besides, there’s always a line at that place, and she really just needed something quick so she could go clubbing.”

Now he had Aziraphale’s full attention. The angel removed his reading glasses, sat up from the mountain of pillows he always leaned back on to read, and said rather sternly, “I think you had better give me a full accounting.”

* * *

“… and then _Hastur_ turned up, for fuck’s sake, and I had to pretend to shag her in the Ladies’ so people would bugger off and leave us alone, and we got out through the window – “

* * *

When he had finished. Aziraphale simply stared at him for a moment as if still processing information, and finally managed, “Well, I don’t know what to say.”

He seemed more unable to quite take it all in than actually cross.

“What about, ‘Dearest Crowley, I’m glad you’re home safe.’?"

“Well – I am,” relented Aziraphale, trying to hold back a tender smile for a moment and failing. Bless it, Crowley could never resist that smile, no matter how shattered he was. He pushed up on one arm to put the other around the angel’s shoulders and give him a kiss in the general region of the ear. He was too punchy to really aim.

“”Perhaps,” said Aziraphale, “you ought to tempt _me_ a little, if it’s not too tiring. Just so I won’t feel left out.”

Crowley discovered that it was not, in fact, too tiring.

* * *

Later, with the bedclothes in comfortable disarray and those _ridiculous _pyjamas tossed randomly on the rug with Crowley’s black jeans and shirt, he held Aziraphale’s head against his wiry chest – the short blond curls tickled slightly – and said “You know, she said when we were faking it in the ladies’ loo, she could feel what I felt for you. That it almost hurt. Too much light for her.”

“_Does_ it hurt, darling?” Aziraphale asked out of the dimness. “I hope not.”

“It did, once,” Crowley said. “Before I had a place for it inside me.”

Aziraphale snuffled something against his chest. Now he seemed to be the one who was drifting off to sleep. He’d acquired the habit, especially at times when Crowley had turned him in every direction but loose.

“Just saying, she might come around,” Crowley said.

“Well, she’ll have to find her own angel,” said Aziraphale. “This one’s taken.”

“I should hope so,” said Crowley, before the pillows claimed him.

**Author's Note:**

> Astute readers of Ambrose Bierce, Robert W. Chambers and/or H. P. Lovecraft will have noticed that Hastur is not the name of a classical demon but was associated by the two later authors with Bierce's city of Carcosa ("An Inhabitant of Carcosa," 1886) and with various other grisly and ghoulish beings. I have taken the liberty of giving him a diplomatic appointment.
> 
> I invented demon echolocation for the purpose of this story, but when you think about it, it makes sense that celestial beings would have some way of sensing one another.
> 
> Beelzebub may seem an improbable demon to go on walkabout, but then, nobody expected Rudolf Hess, the Deputy Fuhrer of the Third Reich, to steal a Messerschmitt and fly to Scotland.
> 
> Come say hello on Tumblr @CopperPlateBeech


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